No Digital

I wrote the following piece: so far, when I was recovering my health from my burst appendix surgery. At that time I didn't know if I was going to recover my health enough to choose to stay alive anymore. Luckily, now I see my health is recovered except for a hernia above my belly button caused by laproscopic surgery. However, so far this is manageable. I mostly have to wear a 5 inch wide weight training belt when lifting weights above my head. I used to lift 50 pounds over my head. After the operation I started lifting 30. I have since moved up to 40 above my head. But, I likely will stay there because I don't want to tear my hernia anymore. Repairing likely won't work. So, I either have to manage it myself or have them put mesh under the skin(which takes 6 to 8 weeks to recover from) and doesn't make any sense to me. It seems like wearing a 5 inch wide band when lifting things is preferable to having an operation. However, we'll see how it all comes out.

So, basically I"m saying that if I can travel to South Korea and be okay. and then if I can ski this winter I'l be pretty happy. I can also ride my KLR 650 dualsport Kawasaki too. So, if I can hike, ski, swim and snorkel and ride a bicycle then I think I'm okay and my life is okay even if I'm 67. For example, I'd love to go snorkeling in Hawaii this January again if I can get my wife and friends to join me.

anyway, I found this on my Iphone today in the notes section. I can remember writing it likely while flying either to or from Seattle or Portland or something like that. However, it is pretty dark because of the time in my life when I wrote it so be prepared for that.

Begin:

I'm thinking about writing something about the future when people begin to realize more about how severely they are being raped of their information which is stealing both their ideas, life stories, family interactions through social media, texting, store cameras, security cameras etc.

Also, in the future unscrupulous people likely will use various kinds of technology to poison and kill people with likely no legal trace. Less than half of the governments now functional will be functional then. The only way to have privacy and to survive is to go off the grid completely to minimize your digital imprint. However, still satellites track you through wild places you inhabit to survive these times better.

But, if you have no digital existence or birth certificate then you are only a face and not someone identifiable digitally anywhere. In other words you are only a face with no digital records at all. A face with no name and no records, no history. You might as well be a UFO or a deer or a bear. And even many deer and bear have been tagged by Fish and Game people in the U.S. or around the world.

Jed had grown up with technology but he had come to hate it now because criminals had seen an online picture of his sister and tracked her down and raped her and killed her. but, because Jed was a hacker by trade, he saw it happen digitally and simply had these two men killed by puttin out a hit contract on them through the "Dark Web".

However, now he had had to erase his digital identity and disappear into one of the wild zones of earth.
So, though he had honored his sister by hiring and online Hitman, now he had to disappear.

Jed had completely disappeared from the system. He digitally hadn't even been born. He was now traveling in Nepal on a passport he bought in Katmandu on the black market. He figured many tribes in the Himalayas didn't even have birth certificates. He had left 100,000 dollars in an airport locker if he needed more cash to convert to Nepali rupees.

He got off the bus near the Tibetan border with Nepal. The bus was old sort of like a windowless van that people sometimes brought sheep to market from their remote Himalayan farms. He had disappeared off the grid but could he adapt to this "off the grid" lifestyle?

A woman and a girl seemed anxious to talk to him that were tribal people. He knew what they wanted right away. The girl would have to marry some old man in their tribe or something at likely age 15. He pretended he didn't understand but he did. He couldn't help them. He could barely help himself.

He wondered at moments like this whether having the rapers and murderers of his sister killed was the right thing to have done but these thoughts were fleeting. He knew he had done the right thing to honor his family and his sister.

As he walked up the Himalayan trail porters were carrying corrugated roofing across rickety suspension bridges across far canyons. The bridges blew and swayed in the wind so when it was windy you either hung on or didn't cross so you wouldn't fly off the bridge as it swayed.

Then as night began to fall he saw flashes of light until he realized it was Nepali fireflies greeting him to the next village.

The hotel along the remote river in the Himalayas had a water impeller generator for lights from the river. The lady spread cow dung upon the floor as the adobe floor was wearing down from foot traffic.

It rained that night so they gave him some green house plastic to keep the rain from coming in the window. He pulled out his sleeping bag, a North Face and his ground cloth and placed first his ground cloth and then his sleeping bag on it before he climbed in to quickly fall asleep on the hand made wooden bed with straw for padding.

After all he had walked 10 miles today with a full backpack on. he was tired in a way he seldom got.

The next day he hired a young man about 20 as his guide. After all, he was in a remote part of Helambu District within a days drive or less of Kathmandu(depending upon how you were getting there by car or bus or on foot or motorcycle or bicycle. Where he was there were no roads at all. There was no way to make one and not have it wash away during the monsoons. So, if you were injured and had no one to carry you out, likely you would die there in the back country of the Himalayas. He had seen many pictures of dead westerners from Europe or the U.S. in grotesque poses from likely exposure after being injured. They were posted on the walls of wherever trekking permits were sold to impress upon westerners there was no 911 available in the back country.

This year Jed was 37

So, he was still young enough for tihs but he had brought some muscle relaxants for nights in the Himalayas in small hotels or in Sherpa homes would would rent him space to get out of the rain or snow or cold of Himalayan nights. He was at 9000 feet presently so it had snowed last night and without a heater in his room and only greenhouse plastic covering his adobe window he was really glad to have a wool hat and a warm North Face Sleeping bag that he was cozy into at the present.

He had also had his fingerprints burnt off the tips of his fingers to reduce the change of ever being identified again in his life as the brother of the deceased. This just seemed to be a logical thing to do for now.

end of story from about 6 months ago.

I'm not in the right mood to continue such a dark story right now. But, many of the elements in this especially  the part about traveling in Nepal were right from my life when I visited there in 1985 and 1986 from December 1985 in Bodhgaya India  to time in Dhramshala India to Pokhara and Kathmandu Nepal to  trekking 50 miles in the Himalayas up to 10,000 feet with my family then when my older kids were 10, 12 and 14 years of age. So, what I'm sharing here is a part of what I actually experienced while in Nepal in 1986 until April 1986 when we flew back to Thailand and then back to San Francisco once again.

This trip made my whole family then "Citizens of the world". None of us has ever been the same ever again after this experience. Amazing!

The best part is all of us actually survived the whole thing! AND MY KIDS LIVED TO GROW UP RAISE FAMILIES OF THEIR OWN AND TELL STORIES ABOUT IT.